With the recent announcement that Stewart Donaldson takes a brand new role as executive director of the university's evaluation efforts, the deanship of the School of Community & Global Health has moved from Donaldson to Kim Reynolds, a distinguished researcher in the field of health promotion and disease prevention and a member of the SCGH faculty since 2008.
Reynolds, who'll function as interim dean throughout the 2021-2021 academic year, said SCGH is starting the brand new academic year poised to consider advantage of growing general interest in public health programs.
Reynolds has conducted studies-funded through the National Institutes of Health and by major national foundations-to develop and test programs for obesity prevention and also the prevention of skin cancer, and to examine the determinants of health behavior. His work has primarily sought to enhance the behavior of children and adolescents, and that he has conducted work in schools and college districts, among families, and thru collaboration with health care organizations.
\”We are grateful for Stewart's leadership, and I'm honored to move into this role during an important transition,\” Reynolds said. \”Public health training is on the rise, and our school is growing. Our faculty and students are engaged in research that's truly cutting-edge which truly changes lives. This is an exciting time for SCGH.\”
That life-changing research, Reynolds said, includes Professor Nicole Gatto's receipt of the grant award in the American Parkinson's Disease Association to conduct collaborative research with UCLA and USC using data from the California Teachers Study, a cohort study of 133,000 female public school teachers and administrators begun in 1995.
Gatto's project will provide important research findings to construct knowledge of risk factors for Parkinson's disease. This newest award adds to the $28,768,000 of grant funding received by the school since its inception in 2008 for the conduct of essential public health research.
Reynolds also suggests the growth of SCGH's professional doctorate (DrPH) in public health degree, which has doubled in size each year because it was established in 2021.
The program has additionally been expanded to include an embedded practicum conducted with collaborating health agencies in Riverside County and including a major medical center, ten federally qualified health centers, and several clinics throughout Riverside County.
